Apple really does win the prize for undying brand love. Either that, or the religious freaks over at iBelieve have been converted to religion iPod and intend to convert all iPod owners to their cause. Actually, it's just for fun and the site says it's "inspired by the world's obsession and devotion to the iPod, iBelieve is a replacement lanyard for your Shuffle. It is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world." To further this obsession, iBelieve is offering a lanyard for the iPod Nano that looks like a cross and sells for $12.95.

The Writer's Guild of America along with the Screen Actors Guild wants product placements to be disclosed at the beginning of television shows and movies as well as a cut of the fee paid for the product placement. The Writer's Guild, today, called for a code of conduct to govern product placement that would give actors, writers and directors more control over how a product is represented on TV or in a movie. It all points to even more interruption during TV shows as various disclaimers scroll by causing the TiVo button to get even more increased usage.

OK, so the Paris Hilton video thing is so, so over but, amazingly, the thing is still for sale and, in this case, the ad, just to be clear to the two people in the world who haven't yet seen the video and might think this is some sort of new Paris Hilton in the flesh offering, is marked, "Paris Hilton Not Included."

"Advertising within TV shows is still the mother lode of how the networks bring in their revenue, and CBS and the other networks have an extremely important interest in protecting the sanctity of the first-run show's ratings," said Andy Donchin, executive vp and director of national broadcast at Carat. Andy might be eating those words in a few years as cable and broadcasters wake up and smell the VOD. Certainly, not everyone is going to pay for ad-free content but an entire generation who will refuse to accept current ad supported content models is fast growing and simply won't settle for business as usual. Additionally, if show producers and broadcasters see a viable and profitable pay per VOD business model, they'll dump advertisers faster than Cue Cat came and went.

In early October, we announced a New Zealand Telecom Mobile promotion which involved SMS, Battleship, and blowing up an actual battleship. Well, the ship has been blown up, 115,000 signed up to win the honor of blowing up the ship and 2.5 million text messages were sent.

The winner was 22 year old female student, Jo Smith, who, on Sunday 13th November 2005, pushed the button that sent the 3,000 ton frigate to the bottom of the sea where it starts its new life as New Zealand's newest dive wreck and home for marine life. Tens of thousands of spectators turned up on the shoreline and hills of South Wellington, and there were over 220 assorted water craft and vessels there to witness the event. The sinking had been delayed for 24 hours due to bad weather, but in the end it all went off perfectly and attracted significant media coverage for Wellington and for TouchCast (the promotion organizer) client, Telecom Mobile. View the explosion here.

Billing itself as the "social marketplace for royalty-free stock images," Fotolia recently launched an online social marketplace for creative digital stock images in four languages, where photographers and designers of all levels can store, share and monetize their photographs and illustrations. Fotolia, which offers free membership, allows graphic artists, web designers, art directors, and consumers to obtain legal, royalty free stock images for use in electronic and print materials for free or starting as low as $1. Start buying.

On the heels of Audible's podcast measurement service announcement, RadioTail has announced a podcast ad network that acts as a sales force and ad server for podcasters. Acknowledging the podcast elite's wariness about advertisers tainting their precious podcasts, RadioTail has launched a humorous site called SellOutBigTime where podcasters can upload their podcast and have parody ads appear in the podcast.